Oil and natural gas, or Carbon Dioxide sequestration wells often utilize wellbore components or tools that, due to their function, are only required to have limited service lives that are considerably less than the service life of the well. After a component or tool service function is complete, it must be removed or disposed of in order to recover the original size of the fluid pathway for use, including hydrocarbon production, CO2 sequestration, etc.
Disposal of components or tools has conventionally been done by milling or drilling the component or tool out of the wellbore. Recently, the removal of components or tools by dissolution of degradable materials has also been proposed in order to eliminate the need for milling or drilling operations.
Despite all the advances, the development of new materials that can be used to form wellbore components and tools having the mechanical properties necessary to perform their intended function and then removed from the wellbore by milling or by controlled dissolution using wellbore fluids is still very desirable. It would be a further advantage if the materials could be readily machined to provide design-friendly geometries.